


Oblivions

by sleepwellbeasts



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Female Hannibal Lecter, Female Will Graham, Genderswap, Getting Together, Hannibal Lecter's backstory, Other characters are mentioned and/or included in flashbacks, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Rule 63, Their names are still more or less the same tho, Trans woman Will Graham, Will Graham's backstory, canon-typical drug use as a Trust Exercise, not actually written in the second person!, slow burn?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25176736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepwellbeasts/pseuds/sleepwellbeasts
Summary: you are a haunted house, will graham.how did you find yourself falling down a cliff with another haunted house in your arms, will graham? that wasn’t part of the plan, was it? two wrongs just make two wrongs but you’re not so sure the same rule applies to haunted houses. it took entering another haunted house to learn what it was like to be looked at without fear. wrapped in hazel, you were looked at without fear for the first time.you’re so easy, will graham. that’s all it took and you were hers.— After surviving the fall, Will and Hannibal learn to stop tiptoeing around their feelings, their natures, and (most tumultuously) their past.tl;dr: ? What if NBC Hannibal was a lesbian drama ? tm
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37
Collections: ItsStillBeautiful 2020





	Oblivions

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to my lovely roommate (#1 in my heart & home <3) for beta-ing this <3
> 
> preliminary reading notes:  
> \- yes this is a genderswap but i kept their names the same bc if it's not "Hannibal the Cannibal" then what even is the point and anything other than "will" felt weird and gender conformity is not something to which i subscribe  
> \- how realistic is it that they could get by for a while in that cliffside house? idk but we already suspend our disbelief a lot for this show, so!  
> \- other characters have been "genderswapped" bc i felt like it and bc why not (jack, garrett jacob hobbs, francis dolarhyde, and will was raised by her mother instead of her father) but they are also largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of this particular story  
> \- i messed w/ hannibal's backstory (as told in _hannibal rising_ ) a little bc i felt like it and bc why not but the gist is the same 
> 
> shout out 2 netflix for bringing about a hannibal new wave + much thanks to the Hannibal Cre-ATE-Ive for hosting the #ItsStillBeautiful event and giving me a reason to write and share extremely self-indulgent hannibal fic for the first time in three (3!!) years!

**I. The Beginning and the Ending**

There was this time once, a thousand years ago. Will was five; that much she will always remember. There was this time once, a thousand years ago when she was a child, she was just five years old. Her mother, immortalized now as equal parts the drunk and the fisherman, but in those days more a fisherman than a drunk, took her out to the water. She didn’t know where they were. Still doesn’t know where they were. Those days, those very young days—forever marked by clouds and uncertainty, sometimes punctuated by aches from sitting in the car too long while her mother towed them toward wherever work was promised. All over the South, and sometimes a New England stint. There was this time once, a thousand years ago when she was a child and she did not know where they were, and it was then that she fell off a cliff for the first time.

That, too, she will always remember.

Her mother told her not to do it, but she did it anyway. Those days, those very young days—then, she did a lot of things her mother told her not to do. She hadn’t learned yet, not then, that not listening to her mother would mean sitting through hours of silence while sitting in the car for too long, her mother’s angry refusal to talk a burn worse than any rare blow she would ever throw out in Will’s direction. Her mother hadn’t learned yet, not then, that rare blows were something she could throw out. When they were done fishing and had strapped the boat back into the back of the truck, they hiked, the two of them huffing and puffing until they reached a high point where they could look over the lake they’d just caught trout in, glistening blue in the mid-afternoon below the bluff. Some few dozen feet away there was a family, a mother and a father and a handful of older children in bathing suits jumping into the lake one by one. The idea entrenched itself in her heart just by looking at them leaping like that, one after the other, like dominoes untouched by anything other than the wind blown by their own minds. Her legs vibrated with the urge to run and so she did, jumping over the edge and into the water, her mother’s unexpected screams first clouding her and then fading into a blissful nothing as she tumbled feet first into the cold blue vastness. Maybe after that came the first time her mother shoved her a little too hard for it to be to be an accident; she was a fisherman, after all, and she’d always known her own strength. But Will forgot what happened afterward, and still can’t recall it. Always, when looking back, there is only the trout that they caught, the hike to the bluff, the fall, the fading screams, the blissful cool of the water on a hot afternoon. Then nothing.

There are no screams the second time she falls off a cliff. What clouds her instead, and does not fade this time, is the beating heart beneath her ear, accelerating as they fall, hands gripping her waist. Hannibal doesn’t scream when Will pulls them down, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t react at all. Just grips. Maybe she was expecting this. Maybe she, too, can see no other conclusion than this, can see that all they deserve is a conclusion, if that at all.

Against Hannibal’s beating heart, Will closes her eyes, holding her own hand against the back of a head she has never touched, only watched and wished to touch. Even now, after all these years, she can recall every touch ever exchanged between her and Hannibal. And if she were to live beyond this moment, she is certain she would remember them forever. All of them, right from the start; a catalogue of hitched breaths and forever only-dreams. The beating heart of this woman, if she can be called a woman, is louder than her mother’s screams might have ever been.

As they crash into the crashing waves what comes to Will’s mind is not her life leading up to this moment, but an image that has reverberated through her mind countless times: her and Hannibal, dancing. A waltz lead not by one but by both.

Maybe in hell, Will thinks before closing her eyes and falling away from consciousness, they will get to dance at least once before they burn. A prize for Will putting an end to this dream and nightmare, wrapped together into something the world must have never seen before them. Just one dance, she thinks, would be enough for a lifetime, because—  
  


**0\. redux**

  
you are a haunted house, will graham.

that’s all it was ever really about, right? a girl with an imagination too big for her mind and whiplash lightspeed neurons that fire too fast, to boot. you don’t understand it either, do you? you carry yourself like you do, but you don’t. knowing how to play an instrument doesn’t mean you can build the instrument. you know _how_ to work it; you’ve never known _why_ it works. and when they look at you through glass with their microscopes and prod at you with their fingers, you wonder if you haven’t become a spectator, too: an outsider peering into your brain, trying to make something of it.

it’s easier to understand from the inside, in theory, but in practice, being on the inside of it has only ever made you more confused. your mind turns and it turns and it turns. then again, an uneven cycle. turning, forever turning, these gears that have never left you rest for a minute.

and it’s always hurt, too. that’s the kicker, isn’t it? it hurts to feel like this but sometimes you can help people just because you feel like this. never yourself, though; you’ve never been able to help yourself. in more than one sense of the word.

whenever they ask How long have you thought about killing yourself? you never know what to because it’s always been an option. a failsafe way out. you were eleven the first time you made a list of Ways Out. the list went,

  1. running away
  2. dying
  3. college



you tried 1 when you were eleven, and again when you were fourteen. you never got far. she never let you get far. she rarely paid attention to you but somehow she never let you get far.

you thought about trying 2, endlessly, until you were eighteen and on your way to UVA. you were eighteen when you learned that leaving home didn’t mean you got to leave your head.

you just want to leave your head. because, will graham, you are a haunted house. and you’re sure that you’ve made these ghosts yourself. out of nothing are made creatures that spring forth from these dreams and nightmares so big and terrible _it doesn’t make sense that they can just come from your head like that_ _it doesn’t make sense that thoughts can hurt this much it doesn’t make sense you don’t make sense stop feeling sorry for yourself what’s the point what’s the purpose why are you_

did your father run away because he could smell the crazy on you, will graham? did your mother ignore you because she could hear the crazy in your voice, will graham? do all the people that have ever called themselves your friend look at you with trepidation because they can see the crazy in your eyes, will graham? could you have ever hoped to live a real life, will graham? what is a real life when will graham doesn’t exist, has never existed, might never exist? will graham is the name given to a composite of everyone met throughout a lifetime, angels and demons alike. a composite of skins thrown on when pretending to be human. to exist. to be at all. to be anything at all instead of nothing.

to be anything at all instead of nothing you have turned yourself into a haunted house, will graham.

how did you find yourself falling off a cliff with another haunted house in your arms, will graham? that wasn’t part of the plan, was it? two wrongs just make two wrongs but you’re not so sure the same rule applies to haunted houses. it took entering another haunted house to learn what it was like to be looked at without fear. wrapped in hazel, you were looked at without fear for the first time.

you’re so easy, will graham. that’s all it took and you were hers.

because you’ve never wanted anything more than freedom, will graham. have you forgotten that because all you think about is her? death isn’t going to give you freedom. she can give you freedom. that wasn’t part of the plan, either, was it? get used to it, will graham; your life has never gone according to plan. by now you’ve cheated death a thousand times—she won’t be that mad if you cheat it again.

after all, it’s the first time you’re going to actually earn it.

ready?

of course you’re not. here you go anyway,  
  
  


**II. Reprise: The Beginning and the Ending, in a different key**

Will is dead, and then she’s not.

Or she never was at all. Either way, she’s in more pain than she’s been in since the woman clinging to her tried to cut her head open, which was the last time she felt pain this wicked and sharp. It’s worse now, because it’s all over, not just in her head; her face is on fire, so is the rest of her body. And this woman, this woman clinging to her, is gasping for air as her nose goes beneath the surface of the water and then up again, down, up, down and up again. Will realizes, belatedly, that she is essentially using Hannibal as her own personal life float. And while it’s the least that Hannibal can do after everything she’s put Will through, Will realizes, at the same time, that she needs to pull them to shore because she _can_ pull them to shore and none of this is what she thought would happen. _Them_. As expected, her chest loops a thorny kind of possession around the concept of _Them_. No longer _I_ and _Her_ ; not anymore, not for a long time. Never again.

It was that thorny possession that made her throw them over. Now, that thorny possession is what might save them.

“Hannibal,” she whispers, and Hannibal must not hear her because her injuries are worse, but also because the water, stormy now, is too loud around them. When did the rain begin? Will must have actually blinked out of consciousness, at least for a few seconds. It’s a wonder they haven’t drowned. Such a wonder that she wonders if it might have been divine intervention, and what possible reason any divinity might have for enacting such a miracle upon two ravaged beasts. What a sight the two of them must be, bleeding into the water while the water washes away the blood that isn’t theirs. The blood that belonged, once, to the Red Dragon.

“Hannibal,” she says, louder, changing the way she’s leaning on Hannibal so that the other woman can keep her head above water. Without thinking too hard about it, Will places her hand on the back of Hannibal’s head again. She registers for the first time that Hannibal is still grasping at her waist for support, albeit significantly less tight than before Will flung them over the bluff.

Hannibal, though, is too far gone to say anything back, or even open her eyes, though she is no longer struggling to breathe. It’s this Hannibal, rendered a broken and quiet companion, that Will pulls to rocky shore, laying her out as carefully as she can without her own injuries protesting too much before collapsing, harder than she means to, next to Hannibal on the sand such that their sides are flush. Will, who abhors nearly all touch, thinks she might nearly die properly if she pulls away from Hannibal altogether right now.

A rock juts into the edge of her hurt shoulder and she reflexively whimpers, and then cold and shaking fingers are winding themselves between her own. It’s this action that brings to her attention the lack of a wedding ring usually on that hand, a ring that must have been stolen by the stormy waves. It’s so poetic, Will almost wants to laugh. If only laughing wouldn’t hurt so much.

Hannibal’s raspy voice says, “Why?”

She doesn’t know if Hannibal is asking why she tried to kill them, or why she just saved them. She can’t imagine that Hannibal doesn’t know the answer to the former, though. So she offers, honestly, an explanation for the latter:

“I don’t know.”

“Thank you,” Hannibal says, or at least Will thinks that’s what she says; her voice, so hoarse from pain it must also hurt to talk, is becoming a distant object. It’s the last thing she registers, or thinks she registers, before she closes her eyes and the world goes quiet.

  
  
  


**0\. i (delayed, gratification)**

  
The devil is in the details.

Will thinks little of Dr. Lecter the first time they meet. Doesn’t even think much of the fact that Jac Crawford introduces her with a given name traditionally reserved for men: Hannibal. Will, having been called a son by her mother until she was twelve years old and voiced that the truth of her gender was otherwise, believes the gender nonconformities of others to rarely ever be her business.

 _Hannibal_ , meaning _the lord is gracious,_ resounds in Will’s mind, though she’s more focused on being angry at Jac for thinking she needs Dr. Lecter at all. The meaning of the doctor’s name and awareness of the Phoenician general that popularized said name are the extent of her knowledge relevant to the name. It tells her nothing about Dr. Lecter’s origins. Nor does the accent, which she can’t place on a map though she knows the map in question would be one of Europe. Tall, looming stature. Blonde hair. Hazel eyes the last thing she notices. These details tell Will that this woman is beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman she has ever met.

Though this impression should shock her, it does not—to deny that this woman is unnaturally beautiful would be patently erroneous. Even so, that crevice of Will’s mind—the crevice devoted to noticing women, but only now and then—is so devoted to Dr. Alana Bloom, with whom she has never before been alone in a room, that this thought comes and goes so quickly Will can only later think (fleetingly) that she truly does think exceedingly little about this Dr. Lecter sent to supervise and psychoanalyze. She is, after all, simply the latest one in a line of many.

Eyes are distracting, so the first time around, she ignores Dr. Lecter’s eyes as much as she can. She isn’t lying when she snaps this at the doctor’s observation: eyes _are_ distracting; they offer up myriad bits of information about a person, and not always relevant if the person in question isn’t relevant. Dr. Lecter, not relevant, has eyes that she avoids when they first meet, though when she meets the doctor’s eyes to make her point, she notices that they are a shade of hazel.

Distracting.

Eyes distract for minor reasons. They also distract because it is in eyes that Will can always see, without fail, blatant fear directed at her. When she was younger, it was pity and sometimes hate, spurred by her secondhand clothes and her awkward lack of social graces, her irritating knack for noticing what people didn’t want noticed and putting a voice to it before thinking better of it. When she grew up and showed the world the full extent of her imagination, it turned into fear. She does not know which one she prefers, only that she prefers to avoid looking any of them in the eye at all.

She sees Dr. Lecter’s eyes in all their hazel glory again when she opens her hotel door wearing nothing more than a long t-shirt over underwear, expecting to see Jac Crawford and instead greeted by a warm smile, too warm for a woman that holds herself like that, too warm for someone who has probably read an extensive file on Will Graham, Would-Be FBI Agent. Courtesy of Jac Crawford.

 _Good morning, Will; may I come in?_ and then _The adventure will be yours and mine today_. Too easy—those words come too easy. Maybe that’s why Will, nearly spellbound already by those words alone, does let her in.

It isn’t until a few minutes later, when Will is reeling from the shock of Hannibal making her laugh—she can’t remember, for the life of her, the last time she laughed that hard—that she meets Hannibal’s eyes again. Meets them as she dares ask Hannibal how she sees her, because there’s some kind of thing that might be spite in Hannibal’s tone when she claims that Auntie Jac sees Will as fragile. And it’s when Hannibal says she’s a mongoose, a mongoose she wants under the house when the snakes slither by, that Will feels her entire body prickle. Because she’s looking Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the eye, and in those eyes there is no fear. There is something, and she doesn’t know what it is, but it isn’t fear.

It occurs to Will that _she_ is the one in fear right now. Will Graham, who scares easy only when presented with the monsters of her own mind and rarely those outside of it, feels fear. Then Hannibal tells her to finish her breakfast, and the moment is broken. Something takes the place of her fear; she doesn’t recognize it, but she thinks it might be whatever it is that Hannibal feels toward her instead of fear. Whatever that something may be.

It should shock her more, this fearlessness of Hannibal’s. It feels instead more like something a long time coming. Like a reckoning a long time coming.

The lord is gracious; ask and you shall receive. The devil is in the details, and the devil is gracious, too.

**  
  
  
**

**III. Pull**

They don’t talk.

Except they do, when it’s necessary. When Hannibal needs to direct Will toward the proper medical supplies, or when Will asks Hannibal what tasteless canned soup she wants for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or when it’s been four days and Frances Dolarhyde—in death no longer the Red Dragon, but merely Frances Dolarhyde—is rotting and Will finally musters up the strength to bag her up and drag her down to the ocean. Hannibal tries to find the strength, from lord knows where in the state she’s in, to follow Will down wooden stairs built against the rock; predictably, she fails. So she watches from the top of the bluff as Will burns the body best as she can without proper crematorium tools and throws what’s left into the water.

They talked when they first dragged themselves into the cliffside Delaware house, and Hannibal, quietly, told Will that the house was secluded enough that she was sure they wouldn’t be found, not for a long time, and by that time they will have long since absconded. Will, not doubting that Hannibal must have some kind of plan, or at least fledgling plans, pretended she didn’t notice the reverence in Hannibal’s eyes as she told her this. Then she made sure that Frances had messed with her own stolen police car to make sure they wouldn’t be tracked down. She had, damn clever Dragon. And then, after they tended to their wounds, Will went to sleep in the house’s largest room as per Hannibal’s whispered direction, and Hannibal retreated into a room Will could only suppose must have been Abigail’s because it is the only other bedroom in the house.

They don’t talk because of things like that. Because of things like Will’s looming awareness that this house was once meant to have been hers; hers, and Hannibal’s. And Abigail’s.

It’s better for them, probably, to be quiet like this as they heal—physically, at least. Will doesn’t feel like this house is hers but she knows Hannibal wants her to feel like it is. There are traces of Will’s taste (or lack thereof) everywhere. Everything is a neutral color, the furniture simpler and more subdued than Hannibal would have gone if she had only herself to think about. The art that decorates the walls largely depicts water, though perhaps this is meant to go with the natural setting around them. In the living room closet: a selection of fishing materials more extensive (and expensive) than anything Will had or needed back in Virginia; in the garage, a tarp covering a massive object that is almost certainly a boat, though Will is too weary to uncover it and find out what kind of boat it is. Likely a sailboat, or something built just for fishing. And there’s medium roast coffee in the pantry, though Will knows Hannibal is in constant search of darker and darker roasts. Fittingly.

In the library, which is also the study, there are Hannibal’s books and drawings and drawing tools and then there are paperback bestsellers, mysteries and psychological thrillers, and Will knows that those are for her and maybe they once kept Abigail company, too, because some of the spines look slightly cracked and she doubts that Hannibal has been doing light pop reading. One afternoon she runs her fingers over the spines, catalogues them, and realizes that they are all titles she had at home. Of course they are, and of course she hasn’t read any of them. Hannibal saw them back in Wolf Trap, and deduced the truth: that Will hasn’t read for fun in years, though she used to read books like these for the sake of solving the mystery by the fifth or so chapter. A habit so ingrained that she was forever picking up new titles when they were reissued in mass market editions and put up for sale at the grocery store. But Will had long since abandoned any hobbies other than fishing by the time she killed Gail Joyce Hobbs.

Will doesn’t know what she’s trying to prove when she pulls _Jane Eyre_ off the shelf instead of one of the many titles touted as the next _Gone Girl_. Hannibal is entirely bedridden for five straight days and Will, bored by the book on her second day reading it, puts it back before Hannibal ever sees her with it.

They sleep. They eat—Will at the dining table, Hannibal when Will brings food to her bedside. Will tends to their wounds per Hannibal’s detailed instructions. Will tries to get used to seeing her marred face in the mirror, and finds it not so difficult as she thinks it should be.

They sleep some more, always in different rooms. Will reads while Hannibal sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps just a little bit more. If sleeping is what she is doing behind the closed bedroom door. They don’t talk. Will doesn’t owe Hannibal anything. How could she?

And how could she ever convince herself that this is true?

The day after Will disposes of Frances, Hannibal tells her a storm is coming, and it will not be the end of the rain. Will doesn’t ask how she knows this; though they have a cable internet-enabled desktop computer in the study, it can only be the truth that Hannibal has simply smelled the coming storm in the salty air that comes in through the broken window.

Hannibal has a great deal of heavy tarp in the basement, because of course she has a great deal of heavy tarp in the basement. Will fetches it, and, using a stepladder, covers up the broken window with three layers of tarp, duct tape, staples, and a few nails for good measure, from both the inside and the outside. The two of them will not be summoning a professional glass repairperson any time soon.

“Done,” she tells Hannibal without looking at her, and quickly gathers up the supplies. “That should hold us over for a while.”

With that, she makes for the basement. She doesn’t quite make it there before Hannibal, whose keen eyes watched her affix the makeshift window repair from where she perched herself on the piano bench, says, “Do you think you could ever be happy here, Will?”

And of course what she really means is _Do you think you can ever be happy with me, Will?_

Will stops, her hold on the ladder going tighter. She knows if she looks at Hannibal, she will crumple into something she isn’t sure she can fix. Not now. Not when this is the first time they’ve talked about something other than the base tier of Maslow’s hierarchy.

“You’re rusty,” she says. “Any good therapist should know that isn’t the right question to ask.”

Will can’t imagine the expression on Hannibal’s face when she responds with, “What is the right question to ask, then?” 

Finally, Will does turn around, and does look at Hannibal. It startles her to see that Hannibal’s eyes are glazed with wetness, and it could be from the pain of injuries that make her walk a slow, staggered gait, or it could be from a different kind of pain altogether. Because Hannibal does not cave to physical pain. Because Hannibal has always existed beyond her corporeal form.

“‘Do you think you could ever be happy anywhere, Will?’ That’s the right question, and you know the answer.”

She turns around again, the brick in her throat threatening to expand. Hannibal’s current disability has brought to mind, over the past week, the fact that Will could overpower her anytime she wishes. As it is, Hannibal depends on her for nearly everything—even walking to the toilet, for the first few days, was a two-person endeavor. Hannibal’s injuries were already worse than Will’s before the fall; now, after having broken Will’s fall, there are bruises all over Hannibal’s body, mottled purples mostly on her back, where Will avoids looking when she helps Hannibal wash herself at the sink, her wounds still too open to withstand a proper shower the way that Will now can.

Hannibal, who has survived so much, for the moment turned into a helpless creature that Will can barely look at.

Because when she thinks about killing Hannibal now, it’s not in the intrusive way she has thought about killing about Molly, or Jac, or Alana, or anyone else. Because she has to force herself to think about killing Hannibal. Because to think about killing Hannibal means to dig a dagger into her chest, deeper and deeper with every second she dwells on it. Because she already tried to do it after fantasizing about doing it, and look what that lead to. Because this is her life now, and this skin is as unfamiliar as it is the only right one she has ever worn.

And if she shows Hannibal her face right now, Hannibal will see every inch of this truth written across it. Hannibal, who has always had the privilege of knowing Will better than she can ever hope to know herself.

For the first time in her life, Will wants to know herself best.

“I’ve already chosen you, Hannibal.” Spoken in a whisper, and unspoken, tacked onto that: _And now I have to choose myself; it’s the only way that choosing you can make sense, can work in practice rather than theory_. “Don’t read into things that aren’t there. Insecurity doesn’t suit you.”

When Hannibal says nothing in return, Will feels hope for what might possibly be the first time in her entire life.  
  
  
  


**0\. ii (everything that rises)**

  
The FBI doesn’t exactly prepare you for how to feel, or what to do, when you orphan a teenage girl. You’re shit out of luck if you find yourself in that situation, and your fortune is six feet in the negatives if, what’s more, that mother of hers you happened to kill—to save the girl’s life, no less—happens to be a serial killer.

 _Surrogate daughter_. That’s what Hannibal calls her, and, well, Will is loath to admit it, but Hannibal isn’t wrong. And as it is, she’s less loath to concede to Hannibal’s pesky habit of being right than she thinks she should be.

But if Abigail is Will’s surrogate daughter, she’s Hannibal’s, too, and this introduces a twisted kind of complication with which Will has never before been faced. When Jac tells her she’ll be undergoing a psych eval at the hands of Hannibal because Will’s relationship with Hannibal isn’t personal the way her relationship with Alana is personal, Will bites her tongue and holds back an odd barking laugh threatening to jump out from between her perpetually chapped lips. Because Will has thought herself half in love with Dr. Alana Bloom (which is to say, the most in love she’s ever been with someone to date) ever since they met two years ago, but she’s not an idiot; she is keenly aware, with a detached sense of understanding, that Alana orchestrates their relationship such that they are never alone together, and likely never will be.

Which is more than Hannibal and her supposed professionalism can say. By the time Will finds herself in the doctor’s ridiculously lavish office for her mandated psych eval, she’s lost count of how many times she and Hannibal have sat together in peaceful silence, placed at each of Abigail’s sides like two protectors sometimes so still they may as well be carved from stone. Perhaps Abigail would be safest with protectors carved from stone—protectors that would, already, die for her, and that themselves cannot bleed. Abigail Hobbs has already seen more bloodshed than anyone should have to see in their lives, which is to say any at all.

Only once in this routine of bedside-sitting does Will find herself leaving at the same time as Hannibal, the latter not making any effort to start a conversation of any kind. Will appreciates it so much that, as they enter the hospital elevator and Hannibal presses the button to take them to the parking lot, Will impulsively does the exact opposite.

“Say, Dr. Lecter—your surname, where’s it from?”

Will regrets the question the minute she’s asked it. Rare for her to inquire into someone’s origins, but it’s the first question she can think of in her hurry to make nice during these few seconds they have together. She doesn’t meet Hannibal’s eyes, but she does the next best thing: she looks at the other woman’s nose, which gives her a near-perfect view of the pleasant smile into which Hannibal’s lips have shaped themselves. There’s a bit of exhaustion there, too. They’ve both been bleeding themselves dry of energy, worrying about Abigail. This thought makes Will’s heart clench. She scolds it a bit for clenching like that.

“It often confuses, as does my accent,” Hannibal says as they reach their intended floor and the elevator opens. She beckons for Will to exit first, which Will does. “It is a German name, though I was born in Lithuania and later taken to live in France at a rather young age. A different language was spoken at the dinner table every night the first six years of my life, as well. I had a very thorough education.”

Will nods, deciding that responding with _Sounds exciting_ betrays too much that she has only ever known one side of the continental United States and much of it looks the same, though Hannibal surely already knows this. Before Will can ask what direction Hannibal is heading, Hannibal, who has paused in their trek, continues:

“As for my first name, it almost certainly will not surprise you that this is not the name I was born with. My birthname, though similar in meaning, is one usually given to baby girls. My mother, sure I was going to be a son, planned my name to be Hannibal. When I was born, I was named Janina after her, but I was often told stories of my lineage, and that I would have been the eighth Hannibal of my line. By the time I was five, I would not answer to any other name. It, as they say, ‘stuck.’”

Will, blinking, does not know what Hannibal wants her to say, or what is the appropriate thing to say. Barely in control of her own tongue she says, “Sounds like you _were_ born with it,” and then winces, adding, “The name, I mean.”

Hannibal’s smile is unwavering; not unpolite, but more than polite, and also not offended or cruel. In every way, something that Will isn’t used to.

“In a way, yes,” Hannibal says. “It is the only name to which I have ever felt attached.”

“Well, thanks for the backstory, doctor,” says Will. “Sorry, it was rude of me to ask outright like that.”

She leaves out the part where she explains that she’s nearly always like that (tactless) but she knows she doesn’t have to the tip of that unwavering smile betrays Hannibal by wavering, by quirking up just a tad.

Is that quirk indicative of amusement? Will bristles, then Hannibal says: “I found it a perfectly appropriate show of curiosity toward someone with whom you share trauma. Forgive me if I’ve overshared, and in turn made you uncomfortable, Will. What we have been through together, it seems, has caused me to feel a kind of kinship toward you.”

Something builds in Will’s chest, and builds, and builds, and it bursts and disappears and all Will says in return is, “Yeah, it’s—okay. I better head home now. My dogs will be whining for their dinner.” She turns on a loafered heel and, before thinking better of it, turns her head over her shoulder and says, softly, “Goodnight, Dr. Lecter.”

“Good night, Will.”

It’s pure luck, or maddening politeness on Hannibal’s part, that her car isn’t parked in the same direction as Will’s, or that she lets her think it isn’t.  
  
  
  


**IV. Push**

Nine days into their stay at the cliffside house, Will wakes up to the smell of coffee brewing and the sound of something frying. The door to her room, wide open, permits these sensations to flood her as she blinks into full consciousness. Since they have been here, she has slept like this, with the door wide open, the way she was never in the habit of doing before. Even when she slept next to Molly every night, warm Molly who couldn’t handle nighttime cuddling as much as Will can’t handle it, Will would wake in the night sometimes to Wally knocking on the door after a nightmare—knocking on the door because Will, in pre-sleep stupor and habit, had locked the door. 

It doesn’t surprise Will when she enters the kitchen and sees Hannibal there, her hair in a French roll and her back to Will as she stands in the most natural of her habitats: donning an apron, and flipping something in a pan.

What _does_ surprise Will: Hannibal is cooking with fresh ingredients. Fresh eggs, and vegetables, and a fresh glass-bottle gallon of whole milk.

“Where the hell did you get all this?” Will comes up next to Hannibal, eyeing the ingredients suspiciously. The domesticity of it all doesn’t escape Will; here they are, both of them in pajamas (a navy blue lace nightgown for Hannibal, lounge pants and a silk blouse for Will that are comfortable enough but come from an Italian luxury brand that Will can’t pronounce), and Will’s bedhead of curls is pointing every which way, barely any of it touching down on the shoulders it usually falls on.

Hannibal, damn her, looks stunning. Even more so now that she’s looking at Will with a smile, a very small one but very bright one that makes her look like she’s a bit scared. That surprises Will, too: Hannibal, a bit scared.

“Chiyoh has an email address she knew to check when news of my escape came out,” Hannibal says, and of course, of course Chiyoh is involved. Will hasn’t thought about Chiyoh in years, had assumed that she had gone back to Lithuania or, in general, back to the continent she knows best.

“She notified me that she would be heading our way from California via car, but it was also necessary for her to wait a few extra days and take a complicated route here to ensure that the authorities will not pick up on her trail. Jac is aware of her existence—though, as far as we know, not her whereabouts.”

Will takes all of this in, and comes back with: “What was she doing in California?”

“Sightseeing,” Hannibal says, simply.

“And what did she do here?”

Hannibal’s hazel eyes flicker at her, then flicker back to the now-finished omelet. She places it on a plate that Will hadn’t noticed, a plate that already has two sausages and a piece of bacon on it, and hands it to Will along with a fork and knife.

Will takes them, and then Hannibal says, “I did not see her. She dropped off food and more medical supplies sometime before sunset, and I awoke to her message about where she had left them outside. This house, as many of my emergency assets are, is under one of Chiyoh’s aliases.”

“I assume you contacted her when we got here, then?”

“No,” says Hannibal, “I contacted her the first time I gained enough consciousness and strength to do so, from a burner phone, which was about seven days ago.”

A pause; throughout it, Will inspects the plate of food she’s holding, a comical parody of the elaborate meals Hannibal once prepared, a sprig of rosemary decorating the omelet like that can possibly make it up to par with Hannibal’s impossibly high standards.

Hannibal continues, softly: “I was admittedly worried about how you might react upon finding out that someone else knows where we are.”

Now Will does look at Hannibal, studying her face for the betrayal she always expects to find there. She doesn’t find it, and so she sighs and puts up the white flag.

“Okay,” Will says, walking to the table and setting down her plate. “Fine. I’m not mad, because this is a major step up from eating canned food, but moving forward, you’ve got to tell me about things like this.”

She catches her top lip between her teeth for a second in contemplation, then looks at Hannibal, who is looking at her. “Okay?”

“You have my word.”

Will prepares their coffee while Hannibal finishes making her own omelet, and it isn’t until Hannibal comes to take a seat across from Will that Will, who hasn’t take a bite yet out of politeness, broaches the other topic that needs broaching.

“Hannibal,” she says, throwing caution to the wind because they’re already here, what’s there to lose, “have you been pretending to heal slower than you’re actually healing?”

Hannibal, fork with spiked sausage half-raised to her mouth, stops mid-action, and then sets her fork down carefully as she says, “Not technically.”

She raises her eyes to meet Will’s, and Will meets them with a brazen ease. Hannibal continues, “I am healing as fast, or as slow, as nature allows. But you are aware of my tolerance for pain.”

That tells Will enough. She leans back in her seat, and says, “I know you’re going to say it’s somehow for my benefit, so enlighten me. How is you acting all helpless in my best interest, Hannibal?”

Will doesn’t miss the spark of amusement that ignites in Hannibal’s eyes.

“I thought you would find it easier to accept this life if you first had a window of opportunity to reverse it,” says Hannibal.

At that Will chokes out a harsh laugh, then shakes her head with a little smile on her face. “So the window of opportunity is up?”

“It was not an act for the first three or so days,” Hannibal says. “I was quite delirious from all the painkillers. You could have ended my life without exerting hardly any effort at all. At any rate, you are further ahead in the recovery period than I am, and could very well still ‘take me,’ should you wish.”

“I’m starting to think the universe will always intervene if I try to do that,” says Will, “but the comforting flipside is that it’ll probably intervene if you try, too.”

“If I try to kill you, Will, or if I try to kill myself?”

The smile melts away from Will’s face, rapidly transforming into a deeply etched frown. After that they eat in silence for a few minutes, Will swallowing down a gulp of coffee before setting her glass down and taking a deep, but quiet, breath.

“So,” she says, “I guess sooner or later we have to talk about how I tried to kill us both, right?”

Hannibal’s gaze on her is heavy, but not judgmental or harsh. In every way, something that Will isn’t used to. Not when gazes are heavy like that.

“I cannot imagine a reality where you are comfortable with me acting the part of your therapist, Will,” Hannibal says, “and especially not now.”

“You don’t have to coddle me.” Will averts her gaze, too warm under Hannibal’s. Always too warm under Hannibal’s gaze. “I told you already. I chose you.”

She catches the hitch in Hannibal’s breath. Immediately following the hitch: “And life chose you. Not the other way around.”

“I could’ve left you to drown.”

“I might have found the strength to swim to shore, but as it is, I did not have to.”

“I could’ve let us both drown.”

Hannibal’s silence deafens, then she says, “You could have. And you did not. What am I to you, Will, that you wish to kill me if you are to die, and to see me kept alive if you are to live?”

Will crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. Instead of gracing that with a proper reply, she says, “‘In this life to die is not so hard. To make a life is significantly harder.’”

Hannibal purses her lips, only just. “Vladimir Mayakovsky, addressed to the late Sergei Yesenin after the latter committed suicide.”

“I took a class on Russian literature in college. It’s the only part I remember. The ending lines.”

“My knowledge of the letters of the Russian Revolution is cursory—for obvious reasons, my family quite detested everything Russian.” A pause, and then: “But I know Mayakovsky. ‘We have to rip our joy out of the days to come.’ The lines that precede the ones you just shared, I believe.”

“He had a point. But sometimes,” Will says, “suicide is the brave choice.”

Hannibal smiles. “You are not suicidal in the clinical sense, Will. You are a martyr. In that sense, you are suicidal.”

“ _Was_ a martyr. I couldn’t kill us. I’m not interested in trying again.” It comes to Will’s attention that she is digging her own nails into the skin of her right arm. She digs them in a little deeper, and says, “If I’m a martyr, then what are you?”

There’s a pause for contemplation before Hannibal speaks again.

“I’ve never intended to eat you as anything other than a poisoned last supper,” she says, “if that knowledge offers you anything.”

Will feels boneless in her own skin, hearing those words. She looks Hannibal in the eye, and again, searches—searches for betrayal, or for a sense of falsity. And again, it is not there.

“Hannibal,” Will says, and her train of thought dissipates with that one word. Instead, she closes her eyes and holds her hand out blindly across the table. She half-expects Hannibal to launch her own attack now, to feel a knife dig into the skin of her hand, for this to be the end.

Instead another hand latches itself onto hers, tentatively at first, like Hannibal isn’t completely sure what she’s being offered, and to be fair, Will isn’t completely sure what she’s offering, either. Then Hannibal’s fingers lace themselves between Will’s, and Will’s hand, of its own accord, follows suit.

“You do not trust me,” says Hannibal, “and still, you saved me.”

“Trust you?” Will scoffs, but doesn’t relinquish her hold on Hannibal’s hand. She opens her eyes. “No, Hannibal. I don’t trust you. As it turns out, I am conditionally, and fiercely, protective of your life, but I don’t trust you. I did. I used to trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. I trusted you as a higher authority in my mind than myself. You took advantage of that. You’re the one who squandered it.”

Without missing a beat, Hannibal nods, and says, “I did.”

“I keep seeing you killing me in my mind,” Will says. “I see it over and over. I saw it even when you couldn’t leave your bed without my help. I see it more easily than I see myself killing you.”

Hannibal opens her mouth to say something, and Will cuts her off because she doesn’t want to hear it, whatever it is. “And every time— _every_ single time—I never see myself fighting back. You understand, right? War’s over, Hannibal. I’m done. We’re either doing this or we’re not. We ‘rip our joy out of the days to come,’ or there may as well be no days to come at all.”

“I think,” Hannibal says, “that I would very easily wage war once again, against anyone who were to come and try to take you from me.”

“Good, because I would do the same.” Will hesitates, looking at their joined hands. Now Hannibal’s gaze is directed at their hands, too, as if she is trying to convince herself that this is real. It is endearing in a way Will didn’t know Hannibal could be endearing. Softer now, losing the edge in her voice, Will says, “I want to trust you again. Do you think—do you think I can trust you again?”

“That is entirely up to you, Will.”

“Refreshing change of pace.” Spoken with a hint of mocking sarcasm, and Will means every word of it.

**0\. iii (a warm gun)**

Fast forward. Then stop. Stop at the crossroads where therapy stopped being therapy, because it was never really therapy, and start at the point where Will crossed a threshold she didn’t know was a threshold at the time: the threshold where Dr. Hannibal Lecter became Hannibal, Will’s first real friend. Her first best friend.

When? Look here: Will kisses Alana Bloom, sweet Alana, who should taste like relief and instead tastes like something dying. Will’s first thought as she pulls away from the woman she thought might’ve once been her belated first love: _I need to see Hannibal_. Like Will is a teenage girl again and she needs to tell her sleepover friends about kissing her crush. Only Will didn’t have friends when she was a teenage girl, so she never got invited to sleepovers.

Skip ahead. Skip to Hannibal telling Will that she helped Abigail hide Nicholas Boyle’s body. The relief Will feels when she realizes it’s okay, that Abigail will be okay. The sweet taste of relief on her shoulders that Alana should’ve given him, and couldn’t.

Further. She’s sick. Will is sick. She has to be sick. If not, then she’s just plain crazy. She’s had her whole life to resign herself to being plain crazy. What changed? Abigail. Abigail entered the picture. Will never thought herself fit to be a mother and here she is trying, anyway. Hannibal drives her to see a doctor. To get her brain tested. Soft. Hannibal’s touch on her shoulder is soft as she ushers Will into the building’s lobby. Soft not because she thinks Will is delicate but because what she feels for Will is delicate. She feels something for Will. Something that goes beyond a patient-doctor relationship. Kinship. Shared trauma. Will feels it, too, and it scares her. What—

Skip. Lies. Months of lies. A lifetime of lies. Hannibal’s kinship a lie. Or not. Abigail dead. That smarts the most. And not. Will is confused. Frustrated. Wants to scream. Wants to die. Wants to live, out of spite. She hates, hates, _hates_ —

Fast forward. None of it matters. And it matters more than anything in the world. Pretending to be Hannibal’s friend again, only this time she knows who Hannibal really is. What she really is. Like looking into a mirror, and not. Sometimes she looks into the mirror and instead of her own face she sees Hannibal’s. She wonders if this is the same for Hannibal, only vice versa, and if this is why Hannibal did what she did to her, and if so, Will thinks she might understand, might be able to admit that she isn’t pretending to be someone else when she kills Randall Tier, might be able to accept that this person she’s pretending to be is the only person she’s ever actually been, might be able to live with—

Or go back to the beginning. To Hannibal calling her a mongoose, and signing off on her psych eval from the get-go. Because it could only have been then that Will’s fate was sealed, like a ghost kiss on her knuckles she can imagine late at night. Like a ghost kiss she can let herself want, if it’s dark enough to hide behind the lack of light surrounding her.

**V. Ignite**

“I have an idea,” Hannibal says.

Will looks at her, diverting her gaze from the book she’s reading on the couch across from where Hannibal is seated on a velvet gray armchair. It has been a week since their conversation over breakfast, their first real breakfast, made from food Chiyoh brought for them. Though Chiyoh has still not shown her face—for, Will suspects, Will’s benefit more than anything else—Hannibal has assured Will that she is nearby should any needs arise.

For Will’s part, she’s abandoned trying to impress or prove, and is making her way through her fourth mystery novel this week. Every time she solves the mystery much too early for the narrative to be satisfying after the fact, she somewhat bemoans the lack of a television in the house. She always thought that given the chance to do nothing but relax, she might take up television watching as a habit.

She and Hannibal are still accustoming themselves to this new orbit. New, of course, in the sense that for the first time since they’ve known each other, they are free to experience, and express, themselves freely. But that is only the surface of their new circumstances.

Since that conversation, Hannibal has made no effort to touch Will further, though Will has—but only sometimes, and very sparingly. A few times: a touch on the shoulder as she passes by. Once, another extended hand. Touches that mean more than the necessary touches exchanged when Hannibal still needed Will’s help tending to her injuries. They have very little to talk about, and much time to pass.

“I am,” says Will, “almost afraid to ask what that idea is.”

“You needn’t agree to it, it’s only a suggestion.” Hannibal pauses, then closes her book. It’s a thick brown text, and the title is in French. Setting it aside carefully, Hannibal looks up at Will again. “I have a drug. A combination of thiopental sodium and other hypnotics. A drug I discovered in my youth, as a medical student in France. You might call it something of a truth serum, though such a thing as a pure truth serum exists only in fantasy. It only lowers inhibitions, to a rather extraordinary level, and thus allows the mind to speak freely.”

Will bristles, and she can tell that Hannibal feels it. “You want me to take it? Why?”

“That’s not at all what I had in mind. I would administer it to myself, and you may talk to me for as long as the effects last.”

Dumbly, Will repeats, “Why?” Then she sits up, interest piqued, place in her own book long forgotten as she sets it aside without bothering to mark it. “Why? What would you get out of it?”

“I am offering this with what you might get out of it in mind.”

“That’s unlike you.”

“Is it?” Hannibal quirks an eyebrow. “I was granted nearly everything I’ve ever wanted when you chose to save me after trying to kill me.”

Now it’s Will’s turn to quirk an eyebrow up. “Nearly everything?”

“I only mean that prior to meeting you, what I wanted most in the world was to have had more time with my sister.”

“Is that the kind of thing we’d talk about, if you took the drug?”

“If you wish, yes.”

“You want me to trust you again. That’s why you’re offering this.”

“Perhaps.” A moment of silence, then: “But I am also resigned to a life where you never again trust me fully, as I was once resigned to a life where I never again trusted you fully.”

“Do you think I should be sorry for what I did? Back then, the first time I could’ve run away with you.”

“Once, I would have said yes.”

“I didn’t think you were.” Will wants to curl in on herself; instead, she straightens her posture. “Sorry, I mean. I didn’t think you were sorry. Now I think you are. I think you’re so sorry you can’t stand it, and that’s why you want to do this for me. If you’re doing it for me—I almost feel like you’re doing it for you.”

Hannibal’s eyes are dark, and Will speaks again before Hannibal can respond.

“I’m sorry, too. I’ve always been. But you and I both know that’s not the same thing as you being sorry. We’ve taken a hell of a lot from each other. You’ve taken entire lives. Look at me now, building another one with you, while they don’t have that privilege.”

With grace, Hannibal dips her head ever so slightly in acknowledgment.

“What do you want from me if you take it?” Will shifts in her seat, and looks away when Hannibal’s unwaveringly dark eyes become too much. “Be honest, Hannibal. Let’s start there, with you being honest right now, without the drug.”

Hannibal only takes a half-second to contemplate before she answers, Will’s gaze still averted.

“You know how I feel about you,” she says, and Will is warm even now when she isn’t under Hannibal’s gaze. “That is not the same as me having told you. I might argue that I have told you, a thousand times, in less than the three words it would take, in English, to be most candid. But you understand what I mean. I wish to tell you, and for you to listen, and understand, without believing there to be anything other than candor in those words.”

“You say that like you don’t know if the feelings are requited,” Will says, quiet. Nearly a whisper. She’s never fantasized or fathomed this conversation. She couldn’t allow herself to delve that far.

“I don’t,” says Hannibal, free of spite. Free of anything. She sounds more agreeable than she’s ever sounded.

She sounds resigned, and Will feels powerful at the same time that she feels—unwittingly at the hands of her boundless empathy, and the feelings she has for this woman despite everything—pained.

“Would it matter if they weren’t?”

“No,” says Hannibal immediately, “granted that it would not mean you wished to leave me.”

“It wouldn’t.” A genuine whisper. So much for feeling powerful, though to some degree she still does. “I want to be here with you. I’ve wanted it—I’ve wanted it since I realized it was something I could possibly have. Would it matter if I never wanted to do anything more than just being here? Even if you knew that I wanted more than that with Alana, and had more than that with Molly?”

It’s the first time since they’ve been here that Will has mentioned either of those names. When she meets Hannibal’s eyes, she doesn’t know which of them has affected Hannibal most; Hannibal has a carefully measured look on her face, her usual way of expressing heightened emotion, but it’s different than her most calculated of looks, her coldest of looks. And Will knows all of her looks.

“Given that I never thought you want so much as to hold my hand,” Hannibal says, “it would not affect me, no. You being here is enough.”

Will doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t break their connected gaze, either.

“Will you remember afterwards?” At last breaking the silence. “Whatever we talk about while you’re all doped up?”

“Yes. It’s a drug I’ve often used, in small quantities, to aid patients with the remembering of traumatic events.”

“Fine.” Will stands, more out of restlessness than anything else, and crosses the rug, passes the coffee table, comes to stand and loom above Hannibal, still seated. “Let’s do it. When?”

“We could do it right now.” Hannibal smiles up at her, a toothy grin that should be menacing given all the people those teeth have bitten into. It’s not menacing. It’s cute. “Unless you have any other plans?”

**0\. iv (it takes an ocean)**

_Because she was my friend—_

crazy. you’re crazy, will graham. she killed abigail, will graham. and before that, she killed beverly, will graham. what are you if you still want to be with her, will graham? crazy’s what you are, will graham. crazy.

and above all that: you will always be a haunted house, will graham.

a haunted house with a cannibal amongst the ghosts that roam within it.

hate hate hate. you hate so much, will graham. but that hate doesn’t reach her. it never does. You don’t think it can. more than anything you hate that you are cursed to forever understand her. to reach out blindly and brush your hand against the texture of her mind, the texture of her reasoning. not all of it, but enough of it. the contours that matter the most when it comes down to it. beverly was survival. abigail more than that, but at the heart: a lashing out.

at the heart. murder at the heart. a lashing out because she, like you, no longer thinks she can survive unless the two of you are together.

it can’t be any other way than that. not with her. you know that, will graham. so why are you sailing off to europe to find her, will graham? why is this the only possible next step that makes sense, will graham?

well. no next step unless she’s part of it, right?

don’t pretend it wouldn’t be better to stop pretending, will graham. look at where pretending got you. you’re the most alone you’ve ever been and you’ve been alone nearly your entire life. you were alone in every way until she came along, will graham.

_—and I wanted to run away with her._

**VI. Fire**

Mid-afternoon at a remote cliffside house in Delaware, hidden by plenty of green trees, and stretches of isolated roads. The scene inside the occupied living room: Hannibal Lecter stretched out on a gray chaise that matches the gray armchair across from it, long hair billowing out beneath her; Will Graham sitting cross-legged on the floor, head at the same height as Hannibal’s, keeping a careful distance though every inch of her feels as if something is pulling her forward. Like she is a magnet, and so is the woman so vulnerable before her. For her.

On Hannibal’s left arm, between the crook of her elbow: the tiniest of puncture wounds. Self-administered after Will sniffed the drug, to confirm it as a drug.

They begin.

* * *

How do you feel?

_Like air._

Poetic.

_Accurate._

It can be both.

_It can._

When was the first time you used this drug?

_I was a medical student in Paris. My mentor sent me to ask a condemned man for permission to use his body in studies. Our study. I was good at getting permission. I promised him opium in exchange. When I came back with the opium on the day he was sentenced to die there was a doctor there, and I was curious; he instructed me on how to—_

When was the first time _you_ used this drug?

(pause) _I had trouble remembering what happened to my sister. To Mischa. I could not recall anything past when they took her from my arms. Not until I was twenty, and discovered this drug. I—took it, and with it, I remembered._ (pause) _Will. Things happened to me. But I happened regardless. I happened, apart from these things. Do you understand?_

Is that the condition on which you’re telling me all of this?

_No. No conditions, not anymore. You don’t want conditions._

Do you?

_I want you to understand._

I do. I understand. It doesn’t have to be a condition.

_Doesn’t it?_

It doesn’t. (pause) You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to—put yourself through this. I understand, I don’t have to know to understand. I know enough. We can talk about something else. There’s not exactly a shortage of things we can talk about.

 _I want you to know._ (pause) _It surprises me, that I want you to know. There was a famine in the village closest to the manor. We kept to ourselves. We weren’t much better off. It was a difficult winter. They came in the dead of night. A group of men. They were civil until they weren’t. They were upset about how little we had to offer them. They killed my parents, our cook, my nanny, my tutor. That I never forgot. I was twelve. Mischa, seven._

They ate her.

_Yes._

They made you eat her, too.  
  


_So they claimed later, when I found them. I know I was fed something after they took Mischa away because they kept me alive. I know the most likely of possibilities is that they fed me part of her, yes. But that, I was never able to retrieve from the haze of forgotten memories. They said they kept me alive because they felt sorry for me, because I was pretty and because they could tell I was smart and had a bright future. It was all talk, cruel talk; they would have just as easily eaten me as well had my Uncle Robert not arrived to take me away That is why they kept me alive. I was meant to be a meal. They fled before he had a chance to see their faces. He took me to France, to live with him and my—aunt. My aunt, Lady Murasaki._

Chiyoh told me she was sent to learn from your aunt.

_Yes. She was engaged to a diplomat. To convince me not to kill the men who killed Mischa, she followed me to Lithuania. One of the men never left the village. I tortured him into telling me where the rest were. In the end, Chiyoh could only save him, the one who never left._

The prisoner I tricked her into killing.

_You can admit it was a trick._

(a laugh) I can admit a lot of things now. I did it for you. You’ll never see it, but I arranged him for you. It was supposed to be a peace offering. I knew you’d never see it, though. So I know it was more for me than it was for you.

_No. I see it. I do not have to see to see._

(a pause, longer this time) Why did Chiyoh want to stop you?

_Because I, like her, was in love with my aunt. Lady Murasaki. Murasaki Shikibu. She was barely more than a girl when I first came to live with her and my uncle. Still she became like a mother to me. And when I was old enough to notice her as a woman, I did. Later she was the first woman I ever made love to—to some complicated extent she returned my feelings. She was never made aware of Chiyoh feeling much the same. The first time I killed for my aunt she thought it a childish endearment. I was thirteen. When she saw I was prepared to keep killing for her, she began to turn away from me. By then my uncle had died. Chiyoh, knowing she would eventually have to leave my aunt, thought me Lady Murasaki’s best, and only, chance at continued companionship._

But you couldn’t stop killing.

_Do you think it has never been a choice, Will? It is a choice, a choice I have made time and time again. Were it not for you, I would continue making that choice without sparing a second thought to it._

You’d stop? For me?

(pause)

Too long to answer, Hannibal. I don’t mind. That’s not what this is about. Who would you kill right now, while we’re here? Chiyoh? You’d never hurt her like that. We can cross that bridge when it comes time to cross that bridge.

(pause)

Hannibal?

_Were you to ask, I would consider killing only out of necessity. As you killed Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and Frances Dolarhyde, and as you would have killed me. For the sake of survival only. This is…a new development in my psyche. I am only beginning to understand it myself._

You wouldn’t have done that for your aunt, even though you loved her?

_My aunt had the stomach only for one murder on my belt. When she asked me to stop killing, I had not yet found the men who killed Mischa, though I had already returned to my childhood home and found Mischa’s remains. I made a promise to Mischa then. To Mischa in her blessed Oblivion. Better than Paradise—her blessed Oblivion._

But you believe in God.

_Yes. I reevaluated my beliefs when my aunt rejected me a final time. Then, I saw what Paradise could be, and that I could never have it with her. Thus I realized that God delights in the orchestration of suffering. By the time she left me, she believed there was nothing left in me to love, and told me as much._

Is that true?

_If it was not true before she said it, it was true after she did. It was true until you._

Don’t—(a deep breath, a shaking one) don’t say it right now. I know. But don’t—not like this.

(a chuckle, a light one) _No, dear Will, I wouldn’t do that to you. I may not be in my right mind, but I have some of my senses about me._

(pause) What—what was it like, going home after all that time?

_It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why. Assuming you want to know._

Are you broken, Hannibal?

_I found that I am not. I found that the choice was mine to make, as it always had been. I found that it suited my interests most if I chose to delight in killing, and there I made that choice._

* * *

When Hannibal’s eyes begin to flutter shut, the drug in her veins subsiding, Will collects a blanket from her room and brings it back to the living room to drape over Hannibal. A hand grips Will’s wrist before she can complete the action.

“Stay with me,” says Hannibal. The only non-medical or non-food request she’s made of Will since they’ve been here.

Will hesitates, but only because she is eyeing the chaise, skeptical. “I don’t think we both fit here. I guess we could…”

“Here is fine,” Hannibal says, and with that tumbles over to the ground, tugging at Will’s wrist in lieu of a request to follow her down, her hold on Will’s wrist falling away as she lies herself down flat on the carpet, eyes falling closed. Somehow she is graceful when she falls. Somehow so is Will, when she follows her down.

They fall asleep there, not touching. Just breathing. Will falls asleep last. She falls asleep to this. Just breathing.

**0\. v (goner)**

In the end it isn’t so difficult to forgive Hannibal. In the end, Will could spin threads out of it forever and ever—over and over again, making sense out of it, or something close to sense, but it would be moot. In the end it isn’t so difficult because it’s what Will wants more than anything in the world.

She whispers it into the catacombs she knows Hannibal is hiding in and it’s the easiest thing in the world, letting those words leave her mouth with every ounce of sincerity she has dwelling in her bones. Easier to say those words than to say another set of three words, a set of three words that would require trust.

She had a lot of time to talk with no one but herself, those weeks she spent sailing to Europe. To her surprise she found herself to be a willing conversation partner. Turns out she’s not so bad at having conversations, if the conversations are with herself.

Can’t live with Hannibal, can’t live without her. It only takes a matter of days for the solution to present itself in a flurry of bright light, a revelation she takes as immediate truth: she will find Hannibal, and she will kill Hannibal, and then she will kill herself.

A different resolution than the childish yearning for death of her youth, when she yearned for death as an escape from her mind solely because it was an escape. Will didn’t understand death for a long time, not really. Not until her mother crashed their truck into a tree. She’d been driving drunk. It was a tree just around the corner from their house.

It happened on the night before Will’s high school graduation. For a little girl who’d consumed way too much true crime media to be right in the head, it wasn’t until then that she understood the permanence of death, though she’d always understood the pain of it. Always that: always the pain that is easiest to understand.

She absolves Hannibal of her sins expecting that they will both be dead soon, only to receive a sour punch of reality check in the face courtesy of Mason Verger. Hannibal’s arms are warm around her as they carry her home. As she tucks her into bed. The want Will feels in her chest and all over her body is too much. She tells Hannibal to leave knowing what will come out of it. Better to have Hannibal behind bars than to want this so much. To want this so much, and to possibly have it.

She can hear Hannibal’s voice in her head like an incantation, unspoken as it is. _Ask. All you need do is ask. I won’t offer it again, but if you ask, I’ll go willingly. Happily._

She tells Hannibal to leave. She watches Hannibal leave. She tries to find the words to ask for what she actually wants, and can’t.

She starts fishing again and lets her hair grow out because she has the time now to actually maintain the curls. She testifies at Hannibal’s trial and doesn’t meet Hannibal’s eyes a single time. She meets Molly the week after Hannibal’s trial. Beautiful and sweet Molly with her blonde hair and blue eyes and endless kindness and love for dogs and a son that takes to Will so easily it’s like they’ve always been mother and son.

She takes flowers to Abigail’s grave every two weeks. Then every month. Then less and less. She sleeps. She sleeps _so much_ , except she’s not actually sleeping a lot, she’s just sleeping a normal amount for the first time in her entire life. She starts a little word-of-mouth business fixing boat engines. She teaches Walter how to fish. She kisses Molly every morning. She meets Molly’s family and they’re all charmed by the mask she has on.

She dreams about being held every night and it’s never Molly holding her. She knows who she wants to hold her. She knows it isn’t Molly and she knows it isn’t fair to Molly. She stays anyway. She looks forward to sleeping every night because for the first time in her life, she isn’t having nightmares. She looks forward to sleeping. She looks forward to her dreams.

A chance to leave comes along and she acts like it tortures her having to decide whether or not she’s going to go but in the end it isn’t so difficult. Following Hannibal isn’t difficult. It’s never as difficult as it should be. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

She’s so sure she’ll die this time. It’s not even a question. It’s the easiest thing in the world, accepting that this time there is no possibility of survival.

She’s relieved.

**VII. Resurrection**

Snow falls a month in.

“It’s beautiful,” Will says.

“Splendid,” Hannibal says.

Will looks at Hannibal, and her eyes meet hazel.

**VIII. Whole**

A month and three days. Hannibal watches Will light the fire in the living room and says nothing. It isn’t an altogether unusual scene—winter is setting in with deeper-digging talons, and each passing day has been bringing with it a colder and colder chill. December is nearly over, the new year nearly upon them. On any given night, they are sitting in the living room with the fire burning.

What does grant Will a reaction on Hannibal’s behalf is when Will comes back into the living room from having retreated momentarily to her bedroom. In her hands: a wallet, brown leather barely worn. This is something she has been meaning to do for a while, but keeps putting off.

“It was a recent gift,” Will says, seeing the nearly imperceptible, curious quirk of Hannibal’s eyebrow and her gaze on the thing. Will doesn’t have to say who bought her said gift. Hannibal must know it was either Molly or Walter. She can’t know which one, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters less than that.

“A step-up from your old one,” Hannibal says. Reserved, though not particularly cruel. Anyway, she isn’t wrong—Will’s old wallet held true to its _old_ label, having been over a decade old and falling apart from the black seams.

Will seats herself in a crisscross fashion before the fire, and opens her wallet. She empties its contents and lays them out. She reaches into her pocket and takes out a temporary FBI identification badge, fiddling with it and then holding it up for Hannibal to see.

“Think this is worth holding onto?”

But Hannibal isn’t looking at her, or at the badge. Her eyes are fixed on the contents of Will’s wallet. On the photographs specifically. A photograph of Will and Molly on their wedding day, and another of Will, Molly, and Walter on a spring vacation. They’d gone camping in the mountains. Will follows Hannibal’s gaze to the photos, and feels colder than she should, sitting in front of a fire. She looks at Hannibal again.

“You do not think those are worth holding onto?” Hannibal asks, gaze unmoving.

Will picks the two photographs up with a ginger touch, one under each of her thumbs.

“There’s no point. They’ll move on, if they haven’t already.”

“Will you?”

Will meets Hannibal’s eyes, slightly annoyed at the question. She quirks her own eyebrow up, as if to say, _Haven’t I already?_

Hannibal leans forward slightly, and when Will doesn’t say anything, she carefully reaches out her right hand.

“May I?”

Will recoils at the question, unable to help the physical reaction, clutching the photographs to her chest such that the back of the image is to Hannibal.

“What? No, Hannibal, you ‘may’ not. You tried to kill them.”

Hannibal is silent. Then she stands and leaves the room.

Will is left alone, dumbfounded. She thinks. The photographs feel heavy in her hand. Then she stops thinking, and throws them into the fire. Instead of staying to watch them burn, she stands and follows after Hannibal.

“Hannibal?” The hallway is empty. She tries Hannibal’s room, and finds it dark. She starts to back up, looking both ways and wondering where the hell else she could have gone, and then a sliver of light underneath the hallway bathroom catches her eye.

“Hannibal,” she calls out, firmer this time. She reaches the door and finds it unlocked, so she opens it, and there Hannibal is, standing in front of the mirror with scissors in her hand and most of her hair in the bathroom sink.

“I had faith in her,” says Hannibal, her voice coarse. Gruff. A rare show of emotion that floods Will all at once. “I thought anyone you chose to make a life with must be tough enough to make a formidable opponent, even for the clever Red Dragon. I was not wrong, was I?”

“But you couldn’t have been sure.” Will’s voice is low, accusing. But lacking an edge she thinks would be appropriate, and that should come naturally but does not.

“No,” says Hannibal. “I couldn’t have been sure.”

Now Will takes in the scene again, looking over Hannibal’s rush job, surprisingly even. A surgeon’s touch. Her hair falls at her chin now. There’s one spot in the back of Hannibal’s head missed entirely, the lock of hair still trailing down to the middle of her back. Will comes closer, reaches out and touches it, the tips of her fingers coming to rest slightly on Hannibal’s back.

Hannibal inhales. Will sighs.

“Missed a spot.”

When Will reaches wordlessly for the scissors, Hannibal wordlessly abides, handing them over with ease. Will tends to the missed spot, then evens out some of the rougher spots. In the end, it doesn’t look so bad. Will might even say it looks better than what Hannibal had before, that thick straight elegant blonde hair sometimes let down, sometimes held up. Always brushed to perfection, never a hair out of place. This is just as elegant, in a different way.

Will can’t help it; she runs her fingers through Hannibal’s hair, and closes her eyes against another inhale on Hannibal’s behalf. When she opens her eyes, she meets Hannibal’s in the mirror.

“Her hair was lighter than yours,” Will says. “It was closer to Bedelia’s blonde than your blonde.” She doesn’t stop to think about what _that_ might mean on a deep psychological level she isn’t interested in reaching. “And though it was the same length, she never did any of those fancy updos of yours. Just buns, plain and simple. I’m glad this is the most dramatic thing you did in response to seeing Molly for the first time, though.”

“Will you still burn the photograph?”

“Already did. For myself, not for you.”

Will’s hand is on the back of Hannibal’s neck. Hannibal leans into it, just slightly, and Will runs her hands through Hannibal’s hair again.

“I like it like this.” She runs her fingers through again, and again. Hannibal sighs. “When I went to see you, to ask for your help, I expected it to be short. They cut mine when I was there.”

“I kept my hair’s length,” says Hannibal, “in exchange for my cooperation.”

Will snorts. “The perfect inmate, right up until you weren’t.”

Hannibal tilts her head in acknowledgement. Will’s hand comes to rest on Hannibal’s back.

“I don’t want to talk about Molly anymore,” Will says. “I don’t think we need to. I don’t agree with your hate, but I understand it.”

Hannibal shakes her head. Will smells the lavender of her shampoo, catches a whiff of it from the movement, she’s standing so close to Hannibal.

“It’s something much uglier than hate, Will.”

“What? Jealousy? It’s not ugly.” Will speaks without thinking, and freezes when she realizes the words she has just spoken, but she can’t them back now, and so what. She leans her forehead against Hannibal’s back and thinks about her dreams. “Nothing is ever ugly if it’s you.”

Without another word, she leaves, goes back to the living room and continues throwing things into the fire. Her Virginia state driver license, her Virginia ID, a play business card Wally made her for the boat engine repair business, Alana’s business card, a coffee shop reward punch card, another punch card for a Chinese food restaurant where she and Molly had their first date.

She keeps the cash, fifty-six dollars in total, the FBI badge _just in case_ , the wallet because she knows it won’t burn. Tomorrow she’ll throw it into the ocean, and it’ll be lost like her wedding ring.

When Hannibal comes back, Will has taken a seat in the armchair where Hannibal usually sits. She doesn’t know why it’s there that she chose, doesn’t know what exactly has shifted between her and Hannibal, only knows that she feels lightheaded and that something _has_ shifted.

Hannibal approaches Will, looking down all the while, and slowly folds herself down to her knees. It’s one of those rare nights that Will has elected to wear a nightgown, cotton with a cable knit sweater over it, not lacy and silky like Hannibal’s because of course, of course Hannibal knows her tastes down to the small details.

With tenderness, Hannibal pushes up the skirt of the nightgown, just enough to expose Will’s knees. She presses her forehead down on Will’s knees, her newly short hair falling around her, the hair tickling the skin of Will’s knees.

Will runs her fingers through Hannibal’s hair. She closes her eyes. She understands.

It’s warm.

**IX. Mirror**

A few hours after burning the last remnants of her old life, Will lies sleepless in her dark room.

It’s the first night she’s had trouble sleeping since they’ve been at the cliffside house. She tosses, and turns, and turns and tosses some more. It’s half past three when she makes the decision, and it isn’t a difficult one to make.

When she reaches Hannibal’s room, the door is already open, and Hannibal is sitting up, a book in her lap. Something in Italian, leather-bound like most of her titles.

“Will,” she says. “Are you alright?”

Will nods, too taken by a knot in her throat to say anything.

She wants this. She wants this so much she can’t breathe. Wants Hannibal so much she can’t breathe, and now that the allowance of such feeling is settling into her brain, she’s shocked at how much she’s been able to keep the want at bay.

She approaches Hannibal like Hannibal herself approached her earlier, wordlessly, only instead of falling to her knees, Will simply reaches a hand. That’s easy enough; that’s become habit, become routine. Hannibal takes it, eyes a little wide with what may be concern, or surprise, it doesn’t matter.

“Will…”

“This was Abigail’s room, right?”

Hannibal looks at their joined hands, as she is wont to do, then back up at Will. She nods. “Yes.”

“And the other room, the one I sleep in—”

“Yes. Yes, Will.” Hannibal lets out a little breathless laugh, her hold on Will’s hand going a little tighter. “Presumptuous, I know. More a fantasy than anything else. This house was never meant to be more than temporary; had we fled with Abigail, we would have stayed here briefly, and gone to—”

“Hannibal,” Will says, “come sleep in our room.”

**X. Manifestation**

What-ifs. A lifetime of them. Will has mulled over them. Has even lived some of them. What if Will Graham settled down with a wife and son. What if Will wasn’t in love with a woman she’s tried to kill, and who has tried to kill her. What if Will was vaguely in her right mind. What if Will had recognized her desire as desire the first time she felt it—when Hannibal called her a mongoose. When Hannibal made her breakfast. When Hannibal smiled, and commented on Will’s lack of eye contact, and Will grimaced and looked her in the eye and bared her teeth.

From the get-go.

Instead of mulling over what-ifs, Will takes Hannibal’s hand, and leads her down the hallway until they’ve reached their room, the biggest room in the house. The covers, a navy blue duvet, are already undone. They lie down on the gray sheets, Egyptian cotton. Will on the left, Hannibal on the right.

For a moment they’re both still, and Will thinks this could be okay. For now, it could be okay. They could lie side by side, not touching, like when they fell asleep on the carpet together, and Hannibal’s breathing will be enough.

Then Will thinks about her dreams, the ones she had for three years while Hannibal sat in prison and maybe dreamt about the same thing, and she turns over and presses into Hannibal’s side, and then Hannibal’s arms are wrapping around her and she’s wrapping her arms around Hannibal, and she feels Hannibal’s lips, like a breath, press briefly against her forehead. It’s cold, but it’s warm.

**X. Oblivions**

Will wakes up to a sleeping Hannibal wrapped around her, shifting in the other woman’s arms so that they’re face to face. She studies Hannibal’s sleeping face, her light wrinkles, her long eyelashes. It’s dawn around them, and Will could easily sleep more; she was up so late, after all. So she does, because she can, and when she wakes up they’re still facing each other. Only now, Hannibal’s eyes are open.

“Hi,” Will says, shyer than she thought she’d be. It’s not like they’ve even done anything. They just slept together, literally. Remarkably chaste.

Hannibal caresses Will’s cheek with a thumb. She says, “Good morning.”

They prepare breakfast together. Not altogether unusual. The kitchen is still predominantly Hannibal’s domain, but Will helps where and when she can. Now she fries sausages while Hannibal makes the omelets, the two of them side by side in blissful quiet.

But the gears in Will’s mind are turning with a refreshed vigor that’s been growing more and more as their time here passes. They can’t stay here forever. It’s rather a miracle, the fact that they’ve been able to stay here this long, in this house with its tarp-covered, shattered window and eroding bluff.

They can sail. Will has had this on her mind since the beginning and thinks that, probably, Hannibal has had it on her mind, too. Getting around by car would be tremendously difficult; by airport, even harder. But Will has the expertise, and Hannibal has the capacity to learn—or maybe Hannibal already knows, has understood this enough as a possibility to do research, however cursory.

They can sail anywhere they wish. Once winter passes, they can go wherever they want. Somewhere where they can live in a rural countryside, and speak another language, and live out their days unbothered by Jac Crawford and the FBI.

She turns to Hannibal, thinking about voicing all of this and possibly making some preliminary plans—they’ll have to ask Chiyoh to make a supply run, likely several of them. Instead her breath catches in her throat at the sight of Hannibal’s side profile, the sharp cut of her features and the casual intensity of her lips as she looks down at her work. Her handiwork, her art. And it’s just breakfast but here she is looking like this anyway.

As if she can sense Will’s intent gaze, Hannibal tilts her face toward her and quirks an eyebrow.

Will reaches out, placing a hand on Hannibal’s left cheek. She leans in and up. She pulls Hannibal closer to her, or Hannibal leans in; she can’t tell which. When their lips meet it’s with a warm desperation that Will hasn’t felt in ages, or maybe ever. It makes sense. They make sense.

Hannibal’s hand grips her waist like it did on the bluff, before Will pushed them and they tumbled over; her other hand rests on Will’s cheek, the one scarred by Frances Dolarhyde’s knife. Will throws her arms around Hannibal’s neck and suddenly she’s being pushed against the counter, Hannibal’s breath in her mouth and hers in Hannibal’s, and she kisses her over and over again until she remembers: _the sausages._

“Shit,” says Will, pulling back, Hannibal following her for half a second. She removes herself from Hannibal’s hold, darting over to turn the stove off, relieved that they’re only slightly burnt. She leans over the stove for a second, catching her breath, then turns around to face Hannibal again.

Without so much as a second to spare, Hannibal catches Will’s face in her hands and kisses her again, just for a second. Tenderly. Will smiles into the kiss and is still smiling when Hannibal pulls away. She keeps her hands on Will’s face, though, her thumbs making slow circles over Will’s jaw.

“I love you,” says Will. “I didn’t know it for a long time, but I’ve loved you for a long time.”

In response Hannibal pulls her close, Will pressed against Hannibal’s chest, and Hannibal’s cheek pressed against the top of her mussed bedhead.

“If I said it now, would you trust in me to have said it genuinely?”

Will sighs, and nods against Hannibal’s beating heart. Hannibal says, “Will. Dear one. I’ve loved you even longer.”

When Will pulls away from Hannibal’s chest she can still hear the beating of Hannibal’s heart in her ears. She’s still smiling. It feels alien, and not. She reaches out and touches her palm to the side of Hannibal’s neck, feeling her pulse again. Elevated, like her own.

She thinks, _I know, I know, I know_. She says, “Let’s finish making breakfast,” which more or less means the same thing.

There’s a good part of winter yet to come. When it has come, and when it has gone, they will sail.

**Author's Note:**

> thank U for reading this,!
> 
> end reading notes:  
> \- title comes from the song ["oblivions" by the national](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_xMl32mWds), which i think fits these two rather nicely, but also calls back to this _hannibal rising_ quote that i think about a lot and that hannibal, in this fic, alludes to: "Mischa, we take comfort in knowing there is no God. That you are not enslaved in a Heaven, made to kiss God's ass forever. What you have is better than Paradise. You have blessed oblivion. I miss you every day." (pg. 222 in my edition)  
> \- i also had hannibal quote directly from _hannibal rising_ : "It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps to measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know." another quote i think about often (pg. 213 in my edition)  
> \- will quotes from james h. mcgavran's translation of vladimir mayakovsky's 1926 poem "to sergei yesenin," which is the translation i used for a college class, so! you can read a slightly different translation [here](https://allpoetry.com/To-Sergei-Esenin)!
> 
> i am usually on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/sleepwellbeasts) sharing my extremely important opinions on clowns and cannibals <3


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